Burg Niedergundelfingen

Burg Niedergundelfingen stands in the municipality of Münsingen, Germany, and was established by the medieval Lords of Gundelfingen. A fortification was probably erected about 1080 as the family seat of the Gundelfingen lineage. In the mid-thirteenth century the site was enlarged under the knight Swigger IX of Novogundelfing, a figure who appears in records from 1264 and 1268; these works reflect the castle’s role as a noble residential centre during the high medieval period.

Ownership changed by documented sales in the early fifteenth century: on 11 February 1407 Friedrich III sold the castle and its possessions to Jörg von Woellwarth, and on 1 March 1409 Jörg von Woellwarth transferred the property to Wolf von Stein of Klingenstein. The estate later passed into the hands of Reichlin von Meldegg before 1617. Around 1700 the castle estate included a chapel dedicated to St. Michael, a bakehouse, a barn, stables, several meadows and fields, and fish ponds; by 1715 the chapel was recorded as ruined.

Ownership remained with the nobility into the nineteenth century; in 1833 a Baron Reichlin sold the property to a private owner. The ruin later changed hands again: Schulrat Freytag acquired the site and erected a dwelling within the remains. After part of the enclosing wall collapsed in 1966, reconstruction work was carried out on the ruin, and the chapel—whose original construction date is not recorded—was restored in 1988.